Afropolitanism and Ada’s Realm: A conversation with Sharon Dodua Otoo
On 12 October, prizewinning author Sharon Dodua Otoo visited the Intellectual Forum to speak with literary researcher Chalo’a Waya about the recently published English-language edition of her critically acclaimed novel Ada’s Realm.
The novel was first published in German as Adas Raum in 2021, when it was widely praised: in Germany, Sharon's debut was shortlisted for the First Novel Prize in 2021, and it was one of North German Radio's best books of 2021, as Prof Sarah Colvin, Director of the German Section of the Cambridge Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics, mentioned in her introduction. Ada's Realm (or Ada's Room, in the US) was released in English in early 2023, translated by Jon Cho-Polizzi.
As a native English speaker raised in the UK, Sharon's decision to write the novel in German, and not in English, was very deliberate. "I experienced German [...] as quite a clear language. There’s often a word for something and there's not really much room for movement on that meaning. Whereas I find English a language that brings a lot of [...] background music along with it", she said. "So I challenged myself to write this novel in German because partly, I knew that the German I speak isn't the German of somebody who was born and raised in Germany, and that's okay.
"And the other thing is, language is something that builds community. For far too long, German language has been the domain of a certain homogenous group of people, and everything else was considered to be not German. German literature has also been the domain of a homogenous group of people. So for me, it was like an act of resistance, rebellion, to write this novel in German, as hard as it was".
This element of activism was something Sharon tried to incorporate into her novel. "So often when I talk about my work, I identify myself as a political activist and as a creative writer. And sometimes the question arises, how can you do both? Which one weighs more? And I actually see them both as quite tightly linked", she said. "For me, my activism is a way of being in the world. [...] So it's a way of understanding that in a society where some people have more power than others and some people are disadvantaged because they don't have as much power and influence as others do, I can take a position, and I can support those who are being marginalized".
Sharon granted a similar agency to her novel's characters, four women named Ada living in different historical time periods in Ghana, England, and Germany. Responding to a question from Chalo'a about how the ongoing struggle for gender equality around the world informed her writing, Sharon said: 'It's true that with this novel I focused very much on female lives. [...] My aim, however, wasn't so much to think about how they're marginalized and how women suffer, although that is definitely a major part of the story. My real aim by telling these stories of trauma and pain was to look at how, within each of the scenarios that these women find themselves in, they still manage to resist and assert their humanity, even in the most dire of circumstances.
"So often marginalized people are described by privileged people, and then it tends to be focused on all the bad things that happen to them, how poor they are, and I wanted to tell a story of resistance".
The event was co-hosted with the DAAD Research Hub for German Studies, the German Department, where Otoo was the inaugural Cambridge Schröder Writer in Residence in 2022-2023, and the CAPONEU project (Cartography of the Political Novel in Europe) at the University of Cambridge. A drinks reception for Otoo and all attendees, which our co-hosts sponsored, went on well into the night.
“This evening with Sharon Dodua Otoo was incredibly enjoyable, as it raised a number of issues regarding intersectionality, translation, and the role of literature in exposing us to perspectives different from our own", said attendee Lauren Dooley. "Sharon was very approachable and interactive with her audience. I would highly recommend events at the Intellectual Forum, as I always leave feeling intellectually stimulated and able to approach new topics”.
